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Beginner’s Guide: How to Publish a Website in 2024 (Step by Step)

Publishing a website might seem daunting if you’re concerned about the technical aspects. Luckily, you don’t need to be a web designer or developer to get your site online.

There are numerous tools available that simplify the process. These tools allow you to publish a website without needing to write any code.

This article provides a straightforward, step-by-step guide on how to publish your website. We’ll cover everything from choosing a platform to making your site live.

Our goal is to make the process as easy as possible. By the end, you’ll see just how simple it can be to bring your website to life.

A beginners guide on publishing a website online

Using a Website Builder to Publish a Website

Most beginners feel that they need to learn programming and web design skills to publish their websites.

This was true in the early days of the Internet. At that time, businesses hired web developers or needed to learn coding skills to publish a website on their own.

However, things have changed over the years, and technical skills are no longer a hurdle in publishing your content on the web.

These days, beginners, businesses, and even developers use website builders like WordPress to easily publish websites.

More than 69% of all websites on the internet are built using a website builder or CMS platform. This means even developers don’t need to write code from scratch to publish a website.

These platforms allow anyone to easily publish a website and put it on the internet. We will show you the easiest and most popular way to publish your website (no coding required).

1. Publish a Website With WordPress

WordPress is the most popular website builder on the market with the slogan ‘Democratize Publishing’. It is free (as in freedom) and open-source software that anyone can use to build any type of website.

WordPress mission statement is to democratize publishing for everyone

Over 43% of all websites on the internet are powered by WordPress.

To get started with WordPress, you’ll need a domain name (like wpbeginner.com) and web hosting (this is where your website files are stored).

We recommend using Bluehost. They are offering WPBeginner users a free domain name and a generous 61% discount on hosting (starting at $1.99/month).

If you want to try an alternative, then we recommend SiteGround or any of these top WordPress hosting providers.

Next, you’ll need to install WordPress. We have a step-by-step WordPress installation tutorial that will walk you through the installation process.

Once you have installed WordPress, you’ll see the WordPress dashboard, which looks like this.

WordPress dashboard

Next, you need to install and activate the SeedProd plugin. For more details, see our step-by-step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

SeedProd is the best WordPress page builder plugin. It allows you to quickly publish professionally designed web pages for your website using a simple drag-and-drop user interface.

SeedProd user interface

It is super easy to use and allows you to quickly publish your website with professional designs that are already optimized for sales, conversions, and SEO.

Alternatives to SeedProd

There are several popular page builder tools for WordPress. You can use any of the following to publish your website without any coding or design skills.

  • Thrive Architect – An easy-to-use WordPress page builder with dozens of templates.
  • Beaver Builder – A drag-and-drop WordPress website builder with advanced theme customizations
  • Divi Builder – Another beginner-friendly WordPress theme builder with tons of ready-made templates
  • Elementor – A powerful page builder tool for WordPress suitable for both beginners and developers

💡Bonus Tip: Don’t want to do it yourself? Take a look at our WordPress Website Design service. For a small fee, our WordPress design team will help you publish a professional-looking website that meets your custom requirements.

We believe WordPress is the most beginner-friendly platform for publishing your website.

It is widely used and trusted by millions of beginners, as well as big-name brands like Microsoft and Facebook. Even the US government uses WordPress to power The White House website.

The best thing about WordPress is that there are over 59,000 WordPress plugins that let you add just about any functionality to your website, such as an online store (eCommerce), contact form, SEO features, and more.

You can think of plugins like addons or apps for your iPhone. They make it easy for even first-time users to configure and publish a website that search engines love and is easy to use for your customers.

2. Publish a Website With Web.com Website Builder

Web.com is one of the oldest and most well-recognized website publishing tools for small businesses.

Web.com Website Builder Landing Page

If you don’t want to purchase a web hosting service, a domain name, and web application software and then install it, Web.com website builder is the right tool.

It is an AI-powered website publishing tool that allows you to follow a step-by-step wizard to publish a website. You’ll answer some questions, and it will generate ideal layouts for you, complete with the dummy content.

They offer hundreds of professionally designed templates from which you can choose.

Web.com Website Builder Templates

You can customize your website design in any way you want using a simple drag-and-drop interface.

Once you are done, simply click the ‘Publish’ button.

Web.com Website Builder

The best thing about using Web.com website builder is that you don’t need to worry about hosting or updates. You also get reliable support via chat, phone, and email.

If you simply want to publish a small business website or a quick online store, then it gets the job done with very little effort.

Their website builder starts at $1.95 per month and comes with your own domain name, business email address, and more.

They even have a custom website design service where their expert team will make your website for you. They are offering WPBeginner readers an exclusive discount. Get a free quote.

Alternatives to Web.com Website Builder

There are plenty of other fully hosted, drag-and-drop website publishing platforms similar to Web.com. Here are a few hosted website builders picked by our expert team:

  • Constant Contact Website Builder – an intuitive website builder with smart artificial intelligence features. Comes with a free trial.
  • Wix – It is a fast-growing website builder platform that has all the features you need to build a website.
  • Gator by HostGator – Fully hosted website builder by the folks behind HostGator. It comes with an intuitive drag-and-drop publisher with beautiful templates.
  • Domain.com Website Builder – A fully hosted website builder with beautiful templates to quickly publish a website.
  • GoDaddy – a large domain name registrar that also offers website builder tools.
  • HubSpot Website Builder – an all-in-one marketing & website building platform that comes with a website builder, CRM, email marketing, sales tools, and personalization.

All of these platforms are easy to use and allow you to publish your website without writing code.

3. Manually Publish Your Website

For those of you who are eager to learn and willing to dive into basic HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, then this is the route you can take.

Note: If you don’t have any previous experience with these programming languages, then it may take you a while to get the expertise to code a reasonably presentable website and publish it online.

There are several online course platforms for students offering courses on web development for beginners. We recommend checking out the one offered by the CodeAcademy.

You can make a website on your computer, but you will still need a domain name (web address for your site) and website hosting service to publish it online.

All websites on the Internet need hosting. Hosting provides storage on an online web server where you can upload and store your website files.

You can sign up with Bluehost, one of the biggest hosting companies in the world. They are offering WPBeginner users a generous discount, a free domain name, and a free SSL certificate.

Once you have signed up for a hosting account, you can upload the website files from your computer to your website by using an FTP client.

Alternatively, if your web hosting provider has cPanel, then you can use their built-in file manager to upload your website to the public_html folder. This saves you from learning how to use the FTP server.

For more details, you can see our guide on how to code a website.

We hope this article helped you learn how to easily publish a website. You may also want to see our guide on how to create a professional business email address and how to get a virtual business phone number for your small business.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

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Editorial Staff

Editorial Staff at WPBeginner is a team of WordPress experts led by Syed Balkhi with over 16 years of experience in WordPress, Web Hosting, eCommerce, SEO, and Marketing. Started in 2009, WPBeginner is now the largest free WordPress resource site in the industry and is often referred to as the Wikipedia for WordPress.

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Reader Interactions

6 CommentsLeave a Reply

  1. Jiří Vaněk

    WordPress is a great system for building websites, but I still think people should have at least basic knowledge of how it works, even if they don’t necessarily need to know a programming language. I also started learning HTML 25 years ago, and my first website was built with it. Then WordPress came along, and everything became easier. Today, anyone can build a website because WordPress makes it possible. However, quite often, people have no idea what PHP, MySQL, or how WordPress works. As a result, we frequently encounter websites that go untouched for years until an attacker manages to hack them because they haven’t been updated or secured. For me, WordPress is the ideal option, but every website owner should learn at least some basic knowledge about this system. This website is great for that, for example.

  2. Mrteesurez

    The first thing I learnt in this post is, I discovered WordPress sites usage has increased, I was about 39% or somehow but I see it has increased to 43% that’s fantastic.
    It is not a misconception that you need to be a web designer or developer to “code” a website, it’s true. But it’s a misconception to build or create a website.
    When we say “to code a website”, I think one need to learn the code behind, but “build a website”, one can use anything from Pagebuilders to CMS.
    Am I right, correct me here if I am wrong. Thanks.

    • WPBeginner Support

      Correct, just because someone does not understand the code behind a site does not mean they cannot have a website that they publish :)

      Admin

    • Jiří Vaněk

      In my opinion, you don’t need to know a programming language to create a website. However, you should know the system you’re working with. What the system does in the background isn’t that important. But you should definitely know how to install it, secure it, understand what updates are and why they’re important, know what plugins are, how pages and posts work, and how templates function. This won’t make you a programmer, because with WordPress you don’t need to be, but it will teach you how to build a website in WordPress the right way. Even though anyone can create a website with WordPress, I see many websites every day that are fundamentally built completely wrong.

  3. M. Faisal.

    Thanks for your article of how to publish a website step by step for very easy and learn it and good ideas of new wordpress user.

    • WPBeginner Support

      Glad our guide was helpful :)

      Admin

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